“Why? It’s not like they can hear me.”
Davy started to retort, stopped, and shrugged an acknowledgement that Hill had a point. Of course, that didn’t mean that Hill got an answer, since Davy was audible. Hill sighed and walked over to wait next to him. It was a shame that walking through walls didn’t work.
Or so Davy had said, anyhow, and Davy was a liar…
Just to check, Hill poked the door with a finger. He felt it give under the pressure. It felt like taffy, thick and sticky as it reluctantly gave way. He doubted he could walk through it, but he might be able to push through.
He hesitated at the thought and—
Pain slapped through him like a shock. It sizzled up his nerves from his fingertip to his armpit, then up to jam itself into the base of his skull like a punch. The habit of being alive made him shove his fist in his mouth to stifle his yelp as he staggered back from the door, free hand wrapped tightly around his wrist as if he could strangle the pain.
It didn’t work, and when he looked at his finger…
There was enough left that it wasn’ttechnicallya stump, he thought with queasy, disassociated clarity. A nub might be the right way to describe it. His finger ended just below the nail bed, chopped off in a clean line that leaked a milky…smoke.
Davy looked up at him and pulled an exasperated face. He also thwacked Hill around the back of the head with a tentacle. Hill glared at him as he tried not to hyperventilate.
“My finger…” he spluttered out.
Davy gestured at a tentacle that squirmed under the door and came back with a blob of something…viscous… It held it out expectantly. Hill stared at it. It looked like a bath pearl, the ones his grandma used to have in a big jar in her bathroom.
“Is that my…finger?” he asked. The immediate, eye-watering jolt of pain had faded. He wasn’t surehow,since he was still short of a chunk of himself.
The tentacle wiggled it at him. The glob of Hill squished down and threatened to pop out of the tentacle’s grip. Hill recoiled.
“I don’t want it,” he protested on autopilot, then reconsidered. “Can it be…reattached?”
It sounded unlikely as he said it, the thing didn’t even look finger-shaped anymore, but the tentacle pushed it insistently at him.
This time the knock on the door sounded like hammering. The slap of bare hands against wood made Hill start. He took a step back and, frustrated, just grabbed the bit of…himself with hisgood hand. It was cool and slippery between his fingers, but he couldfeelhis fingertips against it.
“Fine.” He closed his eyes, braced himself, and popped the glob in his mouth. Some sort of weird instinct made him try to flatten it against the roof of his mouth, but it was more resilient than it looked. It didn’t taste of anything, but…
…warm skin under his fingers…dust and carpet threads and a foot the size of a dinner plate… the faintest flutter of a pulse that was so much steadier than his. Was that…ragged breathing and the shadow against the door as a body leaned closer… bad? Had he gotten it wrong … warm, wet, and teeth… Fuck.
Hill swallowed, gagged, and looked at his hand. It was still…nubby.
“It takes a minute,” Davy said softly. He stood up and finally took a look through the peephole. “It’s Reynolds. What does he want?”
Well, since Hill had…in fact…misread his relationship with the manverybadly, nothing. Unless he wanted to make it clear before the party that Hill was definitely not, under any circumstances, his type.
“I don’t know.”
“Huh.”
Davy turned away from the door to look at Hill. He held up his hand and wiggled his index finger.
“You know, you could have just stuck it back on,” he said.
Hill stared at him. “What?” he said. “Are you serious?”
Chapter Eight
Dec 23, 9.40 am
Davy opened the doorand looked outside.
No note. No letter. No forgotten Secret Santa shamefully packaged in a 7-Eleven plastic bag.
